


Universitas

by gummycola



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5126783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gummycola/pseuds/gummycola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How two little boys who are not yet nations find one another in the wilderness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Universitas

**T** he boy woke to the sun, one of fate’s finest co-conspirators, rudely bleeding its way through the leaf canopy and settling its brightness into his long eyelashes.

He pulled himself up from the bed he had made of moss and leaf, shook himself like a dog, and raised a tiny little hand to rub soothingly over his moaning little belly.

This morning, like every other morning in recent memory, he traveled south. He was already further south than he had ever been, wandering a pathless wilderness toward an unknown destination, but he was not weary. An unrelenting presence, perhaps a persistence, pushed him forward, told him where to go. It was a powerful thing he could not possibly understand, something very much like the hand of a god whose name he did not know. But it did not feel like a burden, or even an order. It felt like a promise.

He had followed it to the greatest kindness he had ever known, the strange pale man with wide eyes and delicate features who had wrapped him in furs, who had filled his belly with food so sweet and nourishing he wondered if it were even food at all. The man had promised him many things, most of which the boy did not understand, but he had loved listening to the promises. He had loved the way the man spoke, like strange music, and he had been delighted to find his own tongue forming such words of their own accord, shaping his thoughts into sound.

But the man was gone, and the land was hollow and rotten where he had been, emptier than before he had arrived, sullied somehow. The sea had swept the man away from him and so the boy let the persistence sweep him onward, away from any familiar timber or stone, into the warm and beckoning unknown, the land which seemed endless and infinite, yet wanting.

The birds were being greedy and he worried that the cold might be coming, but it could not be so. It was not yet time for that. The birds were angry with him maybe, knew he had stolen some eggs the day before. Perhaps he had overturned a nest when he had climbed a tree last night. Perhaps it was only that he was a stranger to them, though he had never been a stranger to any of them before. It was an odd thing, and he did not like it.

The stream was charitable though, and it gave him a fish that filled his belly to the brim. He ate it slowly, his little brow furrowed, a stubborn set to his shoulders that said _yes_ , _I am stopping now, and I will not move again until I am ready._ But the pushing thing was resolute and undaunted by his little show of rebellion, and it wore at him constantly. Still, he commanded himself to rest, though he was a bit frenzied, uncertain and excited about nothing and everything all at once. It was too much for such a little body to bear, and every time he exhaled it sounded like an impatient and brittle sigh.

The boy walked again, ate again, and slept again, solid and still as the earth at the bottom of a river, edging closer to the promised thing, closer to the sun.

* * *

 

 

In his dream, he opened his eyes to himself, buried deep in murky water, settled back against a riverbed made of sky.

But riverbeds were dirt and rock, he knew, and he thought _he_ was in the water looking up, but he was not. He felt only cool air against his skin, and his breath came easily, and when he frantically moved his hands, he saw them move through the air and to the surface, and then he felt the water, warm and strange, breaking around his curious fingers.

The other him raised his hands too, and when he slid them through the water, their fingers met, and though he understood, somehow, that this was both himself and not, and though the hand that now grasped his own was both familiar and unknown, he did not feel afraid.

The not-him smiled, and then pulled.

* * *

 

 

Arthur said the New World, _Mundus Novus_ , was supposed to be something, some word that made his eyes sort of smaller, but really, it was just _cruel_. He remembered that one, that noise, the one that made Arthur’s nose wiggle, like he’d caught a big fish only to find it was half-eaten already.

That didn’t stop him from making lots of noises and motions over everything for a little while, putting this here and that there and making the trees fall down like he was a big, scary storm all trapped inside one person. But eventually he settled down and put the boy in his arms again.

He pointed to himself, then, and said _Arthur_ and he pointed to Alfred’s self and said _Alfred_ and Alfred didn’t feel any different. Alfred, he thought, was much better than _Mundus Novus_ , which sounded like a bad dream. When he pointed to himself again, Alfred said _Arthur,_ and when he pointed to Alfred, he said _Alfred_ , and this made him smile and hold the little boy even tighter.

But after all that he was just gone one day, disappeared to another world, and Alfred was left the same as he was before, only he had a name now.

He’d almost forgotten it. In truth, he was not sure he remembered exactly how it sounded. It didn’t bother him any. He went back in the forest and tried to learn what, if anything, the birds called him.

Then one day, he got an itch inside of his brain.

It was so unusual and annoying it made his stomach uneasy, this new feeling, this _Mundus Novus_ that felt like a bee sting on the tips of all of his fingertips at once. It pulsed and thumped and waved unseen through the air, and he batted at it with his arms, his tiny brow furrowed and his little teeth barred.

It tried to move him, pointing his right side to the sun and rolling the earth behind him, but he dug his heels in. _Enough_ , he thought, far more frustrated than someone so young should ever be. No more names and thunderstorms.

But he could not ignore it, no matter how hard he tried. It felt as if his back were burning in the sun, and he must find shade. It was a law of nature, he guessed, some other new thing he had to deal with, and so, with great reluctance, he started moving.

As he moved, he could feel it wrap around him like a whisper, like the hint of a sweetness on his tongue, and the relief was immediate. He tried to be angry about the whole thing, whatever it was, but he grew tired of being angry and got excited instead.

So he went north. He went north, and north and north some more, into the chill of an unseen land. He was not quite happy, but definitely not unhappy. He was apprehensive, but not unwilling. He knew, at the end of his journey, something was waiting for him. He wondered if it had a name.

* * *

 

 

In the morning fog, the crow said “ah, ah.” The purple martin said “thew, thew.” The ground outside was cold and wet, but underneath the lean-to, the two boys warmed each other with arms and heartbeats intertwined.

The sea was bigger than any beach or forest, bigger than any land could ever be, and even its smallest little fingernails wedged great divides between nations. But some lands were parted only by a line of ink, drawn in by human hand. Some nations were all one, top to bottom, huge and cohesive, one right on top of the other.

Some worlds, maybe, were never meant to be apart.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bizarre thing, I know. I hope maybe someone enjoyed it. It was really quite fun to write, so I thought I would share.  
> Also I know Mexico exists this is just, yanno, it's an America and Canada thing. I have a thing. It's just. It's a thing.


End file.
